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WASHINGTON — Unpaid internships have long been a path of opportunity for students and recent
grads looking to get a foot in the door in entertainment, publishing and other prominent
industries, even if it takes a generous subsidy from Mom and Dad.

But those days of working for free could be numbered after a federal judge in New York ruled
this week that Fox Searchlight Pictures violated minimum-wage and overtime laws by not paying
interns who worked on production of the 2010 movie
Black Swan.

The decision by U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III might lead some companies to rethink
whether it’s worth the legal risk to hire interns to work without pay. For many young people
struggling to find jobs in a tough economy, unpaid internships have become a rite of passage
essential for padding resumes and gaining practical experience.

“I’m sure this is causing a lot of discussions to be held in human-resource offices and
internship programs across the country,” said David Yamada, professor of law at Suffolk University
in Boston.

There are up to 1 million unpaid internships offered in the United States every year, said Ross
Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning research group. He
said the number of internships has grown as the economy tumbled, and he blames them for exploiting
young workers and driving down wages.

“The return on a college investment has fallen, students are facing higher and higher debt
burdens, and the reaction of employers is to make matters worse for them by hiring more and more
people without paying them,” Eisenbrey said.

In the ruling, Pauley said Fox should have paid the two interns who filed the lawsuit because
they did the same work as regular employees, provided value to the company and performed low-level
tasks that didn’t require any specialized training.

“Undoubtedly Mr. Glatt and Mr. Footman received some benefits from their internships, such as
resume listings, job references and an understanding of how a production office works,” Pauley
wrote. “But those benefits were incidental to working in the office like any other employees and
were not the result of internships intentionally structured to benefit them.”

Chris Petrikin, a spokesman for 20th Century Fox, said the company plans to appeal.